This line of questioning struck him as a trick, and as he considered how to respond, McKinney interrupted. “I should frisk him. He could offload the goods, sir.”

“In a moment.”

McKinney was in truth feeling rather excited about how Leland would soon go to jail.

“How do you account for what happened?” Collins asked.

Lee considered this. He looked to the desk, to the floor. “Hey,” he finally said. “There was a Girl Scout.”

“Pardon?” Collins said.

“Yeah. I saw a Girl Scout leaving the store.”

“You’re blaming the jewel robbery … on a Girl Scout?” Officer McKinney said this. Collins’s eyes flicked from Lee to Emily, to size up her reaction, which wasn’t approving.

Lee said, “I saw her stealing gum earlier.”

“The same Girl Scout?”

“Definitely. I can describe her.”

“You can describe the Girl Scout?”

“If that would be helpful,” he said, diminishing as the words came out. He understood no one would be pursuing that part of the story.

“Sergeant Wheeler,” Collins said carefully, “can you account for your son’s whereabouts?”

Emily let out a sigh, and then, losing a struggle with the fates, shook her head. Which was the end of the line.

“Officer McKinney? Frisk him.”

McKinney was on him, quick as a grease fire, and after he had shuffled through the first pocket, there it was, in his flat, broad palm: a single diamond earring.

“But,” said Lee, “but…” Alas, handcuffs were slapped on his wrists, heavy plug-eights, and they shut with the weight of a curtain dropping.

The winds had picked up near Lotta’s Fountain. Men in the crowd had to hold on to their hats.

“Going twice.”

Mary Pickford said this almost to herself, but she mechanically put up two fingers so the world could see the status of the bid. It was still fifty thousand dollars, to Doug, and this made her doubt the Lord God’s kindness in a way she rarely had. She felt like a fool, as if she had leapt out of a window on a dare, reasoning that there had always been an awning to break her fall. And yet never had she been as frightened as she was now, all because of the possibility that she would have to kiss Douglas Fairbanks in front of the largest crowd anyone had ever seen.

She knew there were rumors, yet also knew that as long as all was kept private and discreet, a certain amount of “behavior,” as her mother called it, would be tolerated. But not this. They could, in one embrace, extinguish both their careers, topple Hollywood with the moral scandal, and find themselves torn limb from limb.